1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to computer software and Internet applications. More specifically, the invention relates to software enabling improved communication, management of knowledge, and connectivity among entities over a computer network.
2. Introduction
Present, widely used, public web portals typically organize information according to topics rather than type. In instances where information is organized by type, the various types between portals are often inconsistent and unstructured. The same portals also do not organize information (stored on behalf of its users) utilizing relationships that information has with other information, such as people and places, on the network or in the portal. Public portals organize data on the public web using public taxonomies and fail to display or convey information on connections between information and knowledge in their directories. Furthermore, they fail to organize personal or group information. Although enterprise portals are capable of organizing group or team information, they are often inaccessible to the public or to individuals and are expensive and monolithic. Even less utilitarian and intelligent with respect to organizing information are the popular online search engines which are completely unstructured and typically organize information and data by relevance to keywords.
Therefore, what is needed is a single location and application on a network where a user can organize public, group, and private/personal information and have this single, location accessible to the public. What is needed is a new, ontology-driven portal that organizes all three categories of data according to various “facets” using underlying ontologies to define each “facet” and wherein any type of information can be classified and linked to other types of information. That is, what is needed is an application that enables a user to effectively utilize and manage knowledge and data the user posses and allows other users to effectively and seamlessly benefit from the user's knowledge and data over a computer network.